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THE RELIGION OF A 
SENSIBLE AMERICAN 




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THE RELIGION 

OF A 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 




BY 
DAVID STARR JORDAN 

President of Leland Stanford funior 

University 



"Believe and venture; as for 
pledges, the gods give none." 





BOSTON 

American Unitarian Association 
1909 




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Copyright y I pop 
American Unitarian Association 



^*' * *y a ^i H 2 
AUJ20i9b9 



The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



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TO THE MEMORY OF 
WILBUR WILSON THOBURN 

PROFESSOR OF BIONOMICS 

IN 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY 

BORN AT SINCLAIRSVILLE, OHIO 

JUNE 10, 1859 

DIED AT PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 

JANUARY 6, 1899 



PREFATORY NOTE 




HE writer of this little book was 
asked by the Editor of "The Hib- 
bert Journal" to write an article 
on ''the religion of a sensible 
American/' to be the second of 
a series covering the religious experiences of 
'' sensible " men of different nations, the first 
being *' the religion of a sensible Scotsman." 
The title assigned seemed to shut out the 
possibility of a personal confession of faith, 
even were such a confession acceptable. For 
that reason and for other reasons the writer 
chose to set forth the religious belief and 
work of a friend, no longer living ; one who 
could stand without question as a sensible 
man, and one whose thought and whose life 
were typical of the best which we may call 
American. 

In reprinting this article as a booklet it has 
been somewhat extended in length by the in- 
clusion of some matters omitted from the article 
as printed in " The Hibbert Journal." 

D. s. J. 




UT of your lives 
take the love 
and sympathy, 
the purity, the 
truth, the ten- 
der things, and all that 
grows into the larger life. 
Put these on the cold altar 
of your heart. Cut out 
those lonely words, ' To an 
unknown God,' and write 
'Our Father.' Then bow 
before him. This is your 
God. He will not with- 
hold any good thing from 
you if you walk uprightly." 




S'T — ^-5- ■ 

THE RELIGION 

OF A 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 




N these pages I have tried to set 
forth the religion of a wise man, 
forceful and helpful, whose re- 
ligion justified itself by swaying 
the lives of many young men and 
women toward noble thoughts and sturdy 
righteousness. 

My friend was a man whose religion 
appeared in deeds rather than in words, more 
in life than in precept. But the power of 
speech was his and in good measure, and his 
words were often in demand at gatherings of 
students. After his untimely death, various 
memoranda of his notes and talks to young 
people were saved and brought together by 
his associates. For these fragments, privately 
printed and nowhere for sale, we chose a title 
which tells the whole of his religion in four 
clear words, " In Terms of Life.'' From these 
notes and from my own recollections I venture 
to reconstruct the religion of a ''sensible 
American," a religion which, however incom- 
plete, is not far from the ideal toward which 
[77] 



THE RELIGION OF A 



the average sensible American of to-day is 
clearly tending. 

In the use of the word " American," a term 
not of my own choosing, I do not wish to 
claim any special wisdom for the people of 
my own nation, or that their attitude toward 
religion is essentially different from that of 
men of other races. All people give their 
religious aspirations something of the color of 
their own individuality. An American is an 
Englishman who has had some additional 
experiences, whose ancestry has been judged 
and tested by influences other than those of 
the home country. In particular he has found 
himself in a motor environment, in a land of 
action, where no man can rest in the protection 
of privilege, and where the tradition of cen- 
turies counts for next to nothing. As a con- 
sequence, the American knows little and cares 
less for those things not inherently sacred, 
but which have become so in Europe through 
the accumulated tradition of religious associa- 
tion. He knows nothing of the ecclesiastical 
calendar. Thanksgiving, which is his own 
innovation, Christmas, and Easter constitute 
the only saints' days he remembers. He cares 
little for how things are done, his interest 
being in the fact that they are done. He is 

[12] 



-^^rs ' 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



likely to get at the heart of things in reh'gion 
as in other matters, and may very likely offend 
good taste in doing so. Later he will be at 
leisure to consider the refinements of religious 
aspiration. At present he is prone to neglect 
them, and in the degree that religion appears 
to be bound up in niceties of expression, the 
average American is likely to be indifferent 
to it as no concern of his. 

On the positive side the sensible American 
is sure that this is God's world, none other 
more so. " The God of things as they are '' 
has his throne within the confines of his cre- 
ation and no condition of life and no place 
or time can lie outside his presence. But 
whatever the extent of space and time, two 
things are real with us — Here and Now. 
This is our day, and here is the spot where 
our life must be made to count. In history 
other men have had their other days, but 
yesterday is already numbered with the rest 
of man's "seven thousand years," or his 
seventy million, it may be — who shall say? 
Yesterday has passed away and is as far be- 
yond our reach as the days of Julius C^sar. 
To-morrow is still unborn and may never 
belong to us. We have to-day, and no day 
was ever so inspiring, so glorious, so worship- 

[131 



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THE RELIGION OF A 



ful. For this is our time to act, the hour for 
us to play our part. Let the part be large or 
small, it is a part of action. It is for us to do 
our best, not our second best; to do it with 
good cheer and with perfect confidence that in 
God's economy no good life is ever wasted. 
'' God's errands never fail." It is not for us to 
cringe or whine, nor need we cry for any spe- 
cial recompense for days of doubt or despair 
or discomfort. Our part is a part of love and 
helpfulness of love as translated into terms of 
helping our neighbor. 

Lord, here am I, my three score years and ten 
All counted to the full. I have fought thy fight, 
Crossed thy dark valleys, scaled thy rock's harsh height, 
Borne all the burdens thou dost lay on men 
With hand unsparing, three score years and ten. 
Before thee now, I make my claim, O Lord, 
What shall I pray thee as a meet reward ? 

I ask for nothing ! Let the balance fall ! 

All that I am or know or may confess 

But swells the weight of mine indebtedness. 

Burden and sorrow are transfigured all ; 

Thy hand's rude buffet turns to a caress ; 

For Love, with all the rest. Thou gavest me here. 

And Love is Heaven's very atmosphere. 

Lo, I have dwelt with Thee, Lord ; let me die : 

I could no more, through all eternity. 

The positive phase of this religion is the 
feeling of being at home in God's universe. 

[14] 



-^"^ — i 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



This is no alien land. Our fathers were born 
here, and our fathers' fathers, and the same 
Hand has led them on from the primordial 
sandstones of Quebec to the foundations of 
our own republic. The pledge of the future 
is adequate. We are links in an eternal chain, 
and the little part assigned to us is the con- 
quest of Here and Now. Wisdom, as I have 
often said, is knowing what one ought to do 
next; virtue is doing it; and religion is the 
feeling or attitude which braces us up to our 
duty when it is easier to stand aside or to let 
the part assigned to us slip by through default. 
This may not matter in the long run — the 
ages are patient and the evasion of man is no 
novelty ; but it means everything in the make- 
up of our own conduct of life, and that is the 
whole thing with us. ''Confessedly," says 
Charles Ferguson, ''this is a jangling world for 
one who is bent on quick pleasures; there 
may be rhythm and music in it for a lover 
who can waif' 
In the notes of my friend I find these words : 
" It is a great event in a boy's life when he 
can say, ' I and my father are one.' It is 
greater when a man finds that he can keep 
step with God ; that he wants to do, and can 
do, the things that God is doing. 

[15] 



THE RELIGION OF A 



When men search with so much heartache 
for faith m order that they may believe, they 
thmk they are groping in the darkness to find 
God. They think if they can only find him, 
they wil get faith from him. It is not faith 
in God that they need, but faith in themselves 
God will do his part. He will run the uni- 
verse without falter. It is self-confidence that 
men need, belief that they can do their part 
No man ever falls away from God and loses 
confidence in him until he has first warped 
and twisted his life by falling away from him- 
self. Faith does not depend upon anything 
God does or may do in answer to our prayers, 
but upon us — upon our training, our experi- 
ence, our knowledge. 

"Faith in self — faith that links God and 
man and is the key to all the riches of heaven 
— is the result of experience and is to be won 
like any other power, by persistent and con- 
stant exercise. You, and you alone, hold 
the key to your heaven. 'There is,' says 
Ferguson, 'no blackboard demonstration that 
God is good. You must risk it or die a 
coward.' " 

My friend used the word "God" freely in his 
talks to young men and women. With him 
God was not a mere abstraction, but a very 



[16] 



--f's — ' : 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



potent element in the trend of events, the 
great First Cause and the Last Cause of things 
as they are. His God was not anthropomorphic, 
not " made in the image of men," nor did he 
conceive his attributes in such fashion as to 
justify Haeckel's sneer at worship of '' a gase- 
ous vertebrate." It is only in mythology and 
poetry that God appears as angry, jealous, 
benevolent, a judge, a tyrant, a king, a huge 
hoary-bearded giant. The God of my friend's 
worship is an immanent god, " numen adest," 
in the fine words of Linnaeus.^ His will is 
that which is permanent in time and space, 
in a universe in which, using Huxley's words, 
" nothing endures save the flow of energy and 
the rational intelligence that pervades it." His 
is that rush of force; his is that rational 
intelligence. It is through him that right and 
justice are eternal. 

The sensible American finds that good men 
through the ages have cherished an ideal of 
love and service, wavering at the best and 
often obscured by war and controversy, but 
tending toward the end of serving God 

1 It is said that on the doors of Linnseus' home at Hammarby, 
near Upsala, were these words: " Innocue vivito; numen adest." 
"Live blameless; God is here/' **This," said Linnaeus, "is the 
wisdom of my life." 

[17] 



. — ^,^ 

THE RELIGION OF A 



through building up stronger, purer, happier 
units of humanity. He finds that this ideal 
and many others of like import, the dream of 
'* lives made beautiful and sweet by self- 
devotion and by self-restraint," had their origin, 
or at least their first connected promulgation, 
in the words of Jesus the Jew. The records 
show that this young man, who ''spake as 
never man spake," was born at Bethlehem 
in Judaea, nearly twenty centuries ago ; that he 
taught among men and ministered unto men 
for a few years with a few disciples, and that 
he came to a cruel death. He finds that the 
teachings of Jesus are reported in fragments 
only, in a tongue not his own, and with many 
variants and some additions, but with their 
essential spirit strong and clear in every ver- 
sion of his language. 

In reconstructing the life of Jesus, "we find," 
says Charles F. Dole, '' a very remarkable torso, 
or at least the fragments of a statue. But a 
torso is definite and complete as far as it goes. 
Fragments and pieces are firm in your hands. 
You can match them together. You can re- 
construct a torso. The fragments in our case 
crumble. They are mixed with other frag- 
ments. If they combine, they never form one 
and the same combination. You have not 



[18] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

-^.2 , 



one Jesus, but two or more with different 
elements." 

As to what men say of Jesus, '' their descrip- 
tions and paintings and panegyrics almost never 
appear like the genuine work of even tolerable 
copyists. There are second-hand artists who 
have at least seen original work. But the 
conventional descriptions of Jesus not only 
vary, they seem never to have been near an 
original. The more complete and entertaining 
they are, the nearer they come to be pure 
creations of the author's mind. They are 
German or Italian or English or American 
pictures, and generally somewhat modern — 
they are not Hebrew — whereas Jesus was a 
Jew of twenty centuries ago." 

But the sensible American finds that these 
words, however fragmentary and at times 
even contradictory, nevertheless bear their own 
witness. All the wisdom of the wise ages as 
to the conduct of life cannot add much to them. 
All the history of human civilization is per- 
meated with his doctrines. Even were every syl- 
lable he has spoken lost to-day, his teachings 
could be restored and retraced in the history 
of civilization ; for they rise above everything 
else in history ; above the pomp and splendor 
of empire, the hideous orgies of holy war, the 

[19] 



^^ THE RELIGION OF A 



ferocity of religious persecution, and the 
bitterness of theological disputation. 

The tested and co-ordinated results of human 
experience, which we call science and by 
which all theory must be judged, emphasize 
and verify these teachings in their relation to 
human conduct. As religion is the impulse 
to strive for the highest and best in human 
conduct, and as science furnishes our human 
test of what is best and highest, my friend 
finds no conflict between religion and science. 
If this is the age of science, it is largely so 
because it is the age of religion and in like 
degree. Between new ideas and preconceived 
ideas, between discovery and tradition, there 
is in the nature of things a constant struggle. 
This struggle must involve each individual 
man and each phase of human society. But 
in this struggle the truth is sure to survive at 
last, and the inevitable clash has in it no occa- 
sion for despair. Meanwhile the wisdom of 
the race is never in conflict with the worthiest 
ideals, the most repaying experiences in the 
conduct of life. 

And he finds that the words of Jesus suflPer 
nothing under any analysis he can give them. 
They have always been true, and they are part 
of the framework of creation, of which the 

[20] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

„ j^<i . 



conduct of human life is the crowning feature, 
the most lofty, and at the same time the most 
imperfect, and for the same exalted reason. 
These words are true, he will say, not be- 
cause Jesus said them. Jesus said them be- 
cause they were true. And in this sense, 
his words, '' I and my Father are one," have 
a definite and human meaning — a meaning 
not concerned with any mystery of the priest. 
In the same sense, all right thinking and all 
right acting are one — one with the Creator 
of man and with his purposes. It did not 
matter to my friend what other forms of one- 
ness might exist so long as there was room 
for this divine and human unity in the life of 
every man. 

For reasons like these my friend was not 
disposed to measure the relation to Divinity 
on the part of the Prophet of Nazareth. 
Whether Jesus be one with God, or one with 
man, or both, is, after all, not a vital question. 
This he may leave the theologian to settle, if 
he can, through tradition, text, or syllogism. 
It is enough for the sensible American to be- 
lieve in the unity of the word and the spirit. 
The word is divine because it is true, and one 
name of Divinity is the Perfect Truth. In the 
religion of Jesus the end of truth is service, 

[21] 



THE RELIGION OF A 



and religion finds its function and justification 
in the conduct of life. 

The sensible American notes a contrast be- 
tween the subjects which aroused the interest 
of Jesus, as recorded by his disciples, and the 
subjects which have filled the history of the 
Christian Church. It is the contrast between 
the divine and the human in man's affairs. 
The simple life of the teacher who had no 
place to lay his head stands in contrast with 
the complex struggles of those who in his 
name established a holy empire. '' In this 
sign conquer" was the symbol of domina- 
tion. It was in every respect the antithesis 
of the words of Jesus, as the life of Constan- 
tine, maker of this phrase, stood at the oppo- 
site pole from the life of him who suffered 
under Pontius Pilate. 

The historic Church has interested itself in 
war and conquest, in pomp and pageantry, 
in dominion over men and lands, in temporal 
rulership as well as spiritual control. None 
of these matters entered into the ambitions of 
Jesus. To him these were far-away affairs, 
evils to be endured, it may be, as the tribute 
money was rendered unto C^sar, but form- 
ing no part of the ideals of rational religious 
life. 



[22] 



-'^ ' : 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



The historic Church has, ahnost from the 
first, been entangled in a warfare of creeds. 
The creed as we know it to-day is a historic 
battle-cry of a contending host. It belongs to 
the war of words which succeeded the clash 
of spears and lances. To the sensible American 
the creeds are mostly harmless. They will not 
injure us if we do not read them. Without 
their historic background we can hardly un- 
derstand them. They should be left in this 
background. It is not well to revise them too 
often. Their galvanized life may work injury 
to our spirits. '' Creeds are not true," Mr. G. L. 
Dickinson tells us; ''they are merely neces- 
sary." ''Since I read the Apostles' Creed," 
says Mr. Dooley, "it seems less convincing 
than when I heard it and did not understand 
it." As Dr. Holmes once said, " Old errors do 
not die because they are refuted ; they fade 
out because they are neglected." Their place 
is in psychology and history, not in the religion 
of Jesus. To believe is surely adequate. We 
need not go into particulars. To believe is to 
have faith in the universe, in man, and in all 
the forces inside or outside ourselves which 
shall make for righteousness. " Believe and 
venture." This is our part. " As for pledges, 
the gods give none." 

[23] 



' — s-*^ 

THE RELIGION OF A 



As his religion is not regulated by intellec- 
tual assent to any proposition in metaphysics, 
spiritual or biographical, the average sensible 
American is not alarmed over the results of 
the Higher Criticism. Enough that is genuine 
and beyond question goes back to the teach- 
ings of Jesus. That devout enthusiasts have 
interpolated here and there an illustration, a 
bit of philosophy, or a bit of imagination, or 
that chapter or epistle may have been attributed 
to the wrong authority does not disturb his 
spiritual consciousness. These matters are in- 
teresting from the scientific side. They are 
inspiring to students of records and manu- 
scripts, but they do not touch bottom in their 
relation to religion. Neither is he concerned 
because wine is not turned into water in our 
day, nor in any other day, not even by the faith 
that moves mountains. The old story of Cana 
may not be true. It may be poetry, or para- 
ble, or error of record, or even pure falsehood. 
That he reads this tale does not help his faith, 
but it does not disturb it. In the face of the 
greatest marvel in human history, the teach- 
ings of him who spake as never man spake, 
of him who will draw all men to him, he will 
leave to each expert in Oriental imagery such 
theory of physical miracle as may seem to him 

[24] 



^ 6 ' 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

A<? , 



best. He can understand that the parables and 
fancies of Hebrew poets, like those of English 
poets, interpret spiritual rather than literal or 
historical fact. He knows the distressing in- 
adequacy of any poem when all its expressions 
are literally interpreted. Therefore he is not 
distressed over the narrowness of the whale's 
gullet, nor over the maladjustment of the days 
of creation, nor the fact that the prayers of 
good men will not wring rain from a steel blue 
Australian sky. Neither is his faith impaired 
by the certainty that creation was a process 
very different from that which our fathers im- 
agined — even the creation of man. He rec- 
ognizes clearly enough that the ancestry of 
man runs close to that of the animals which 
are likest him, and in whose image, anatomi- 
cally, he is made. He rejoices, rather, that the 
world is far older and the universe far broader 
than his fathers had thought; that ''Time is 
as long as space is wide." Infinite detail of 
preparation, even in the processes of creation, 
seems to guarantee ineffable achievement. The 
heavens declare the glory of God only the more 
insistently, now he has learned what his fathers 
could not know, — how vast the range of all 
these heavens must be. As he who believes 
" by the grace of Jupiter, the highest god, may 

[25] 



' — ^^p- 

THE RELIGION OF A 



despise all the lesser gods in silence," so he 
whose spirit is filled with the greater faith 
must turn away from all the lesser mysteries 
and marvels. 

As with the phases of belief, so with the 
symbolism in which they find expression. 
''Do this in memory of me" was a simple 
and natural ceremony so long as it bore wit- 
ness to the living reality in the hearts of men. 
But when the Eucharist became the signal of 
wordy or even bloody warfare, Homoiousian 
versus Homoousian, it is no longer a pledge 
of his memory. It is a weapon in the hands 
of ambition. Though among simple folk it 
holds its primal associations, its meaning is 
forgotten in the seats of the mighty. The 
baptism in the Jordan had a significance with 
a clear river in a dusty land that may be lost 
in costly covered fonts or cruelly burlesqued 
by holes cut through the winter ice. The 
Sabbath exists for man, not man for the Sab- 
bath. It is neither in this mountain nor in 
Jerusalem that men are to worship. They are 
to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. 

It is clear to the sensible American that the 
religion of Jesus has no necessary connection 
with church or state. A church or state may 
be permeated with its spirit, but religion is not 

[26] 



^ d ' — ^ 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



dependent on organization. It has no neces- 
sary connection with creed or ceremony, with 
litany or liturgy, with priest or preacher, with 
symbol or miracle, with sacrament or baptism, 
with pious action or with pious refraining. 
These have been associates of religion : some- 
times religion has been helped by them ; but 
the reality lies with the individual man, his 
relation to his fellows and to his individual 
duty. 

My friend tells this parable : 

'' In the old days a father built a home for 
his family. It was complete in every part, but 
the altar around which they gathered in prayer 
was not yet set in place. The mother wished 
it in the kitchen : there she was perplexed with 
her many cares. The father wished it in his 
study : God seemed nearer to him among his 
books. The son wished it in the room where 
guests were received, that the stranger entering 
might see that they worshiped God. At last 
they agreed to leave the matter to the young- 
est, who was a little child. Now the altar was 
a shaft of polished wood, very fragrant, and 
the child, who loved most of all to sit be- 
fore the great fire and see beautiful forms in 
the flames, said, ' See, the fire log is gone ; put 
the altar there.' So because one would not 

[27] 



. — ^,^ 

THE RELIGION OF A 



yield to the other, they obeyed, and the altar 
was consumed, while its sweet odors filled the 
whole house — the kitchen, the study, and the 
guest hall — and the child saw beautiful forms 
in the flames/' Doubtless the others came to 
see them also, as the non-essentials passed out 
of their religious life. 

''Many fathers and mothers say to me," 
continues my friend, who was a teacher of 
science in an American college, '''If my boy 
will only hold on to the fundamentals/ They 
are afraid that the business of the university 
is to overthrow fundamentals. As if funda- 
mentals could be overthrown ! What they 
mean by fundamentals is their own conception 
of the truth, the basis of their own belief. 
They want their boys to wear their clothes — 
not the same style of garments, but the iden- 
tical clothes — with all the creases and wrinkles 
and patches in place. Now, the wrinkles and 
creases represent experience and testing, and 
the patches are the scars — honorable scars of 
victory. And I have no patience with the 
sophomoric spirit which vaunts its reason 
and throws into the rag-bag everything that 
the fathers believed. We should not be here 
to-day if our fathers had not believed very close 
to the truth. However far afield we may go 

[28] 



"^^ — ' — : — 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



in our young and callow days, most of us will 
be found revamping the old beliefs of our 
fathers and mothers when we go to work in 
the world. Eighty-five per cent of our stu- 
dents take up their old practices again when 
their real living finds expression. A little bit 
of real living brings back the enthusiasm and 
the emotion, and no one can be faithful and 
true to his ideals without finding God dis- 
placing them with himself. 

"Calvinism and Arminianism are trifling 
matters compared with the fact that God is 
and that we may call Him our Father. Unita- 
rianism, Trinitarianism, are mere word quibbles 
compared with the fact that the spirit of Jesus 
is in the world, saving it. These things are 
not fundamentals. They are only terms, forged 
by human intellects to express one phase of 
the truth as it appeared to them. Jesus cared 
for none of these things except as they ham- 
pered and hindered those who believed them 
instead of believing him; who worshiped 
them instead of using them to serve their 
neighbors. 

" The time comes more than once in a man's 
life when he must know what he believes; 
when the truth that is in his own heart is all 
that he can find. But no truth is ours until 

[29] 



THE RELIGION OF A 

■ ?^ 



we first live it; until it enters into our lives 
and we become it." 

In a high sense no man can accept or embrace 
the religion of another. It must become his 
own first, or else he cannot receive it. If he 
takes it from another without change it is not 
a religion; it is some statement of opinion, 
some type of ceremonial, or some collection 
of words, from which the life has long since 
faded away. Or, in a larger way, it means 
that he becomes a member of a historic asso- 
ciation for the sake of participating in its 
benefits, or, better, for the purpose of sharing 
its efforts for the advancement of humanity. 
From his notes on a talk before a Bible Class 
I take these words : 

'' If Jesus is an important factor in our social 
life, why should we not study him as we study 
Shakespeare, or Luther, or Caesar, and in exactly 
the same spirit? If Christianity summarizes 
the great forces which control and direct and 
shape our civilization, why, then, should we 
not study it as we would the French Revolu- 
tion, and in exactly the same spirit ? 

'* In studying the person of Jesus, his biog- 
raphy and his character, we must do it in 
human terms. That is not saying that there 
are no other terms. Our object is to empha- 

[30] 



•^^z — ' ~-~- 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



size the humanity of Jesus. There is a theology 
of Christ; its study belongs to metaphysics. 
There is a psychology of Christ; its study 
belongs in its particular place. Our study is 
to show the strong and pure, the successful, 
the virile nature, the picture of whose life 
makes every true man stand taller and every 
weak heart stronger. 

*' It is a fact that no man can ever stand true 
under the severest tests of life without increas- 
ing the self-respect of every other man who 
knows it. I never hear or see such instances 
without feeling proud that the human race 
can commit such virtue. So, setting aside all 
doctrines about Christ's nature and office, not 
for the reason that we do not hold them, but 
because they are not for us just now, we will 
use this wonderfully simple and natural teach- 
er's life as a key to solve the mysteries of our 
own lives. 

" A violet looking at the sun can know only 
its violet rays. Its knowledge fades on the one 
hand into actinic darkness ; on the other it is 
lost in the blues. Its knowledge of the great 
sun is limited by the work the sun has done in 
it, by its coincidence with the sun. 

" So with any ideal, with any friend. Friend- 
ship is but the common ground you and another 

[31] 



THE RELIGION OF A 



occupy. Your best friend is he who widens 
this common ground and quickens your whole 
being, the one who makes you live the most. 
You do not measure your friendships by your 
brains, but by your pulse beats. 

'' Some of you say that you cannot reconcile 
your intellectual and your spiritual lives. I 
think you never will, if by reconcile you mean 
coincide. The head can never understand the 
heart, and the heart will always be doing such 
unreasonable things. But if the head is right 
in its sphere, it will find that the heart in its 
sphere is right also. 

''Jesus talked in the language and figures 
of the everyday life of his time. To the people 
who listened he was not using the language 
of the temple, but of the street, of the field, of 
the lake-shore. He talked to be understood 
by people whom he understood. We can only 
comprehend his meaning by understanding the 
conditions of the time, the people, the figures 
of speech, the changes that have come to the 
words he used. 

''The words of Jesus were not religious 
in his day any more or less than a lecture in 
hygiene is to-day. We expect to hear them 
in church or connect them with religion, but 
they were not such words as his audiences 

[32] 



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SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



were accustomed to hear in the synagogues. 
They have become so largely the ecclesiastical 
language of our time that it is hard for us to 
realize that they were not ecclesiastical then. 
'He taught not as the scribes taught' We 
can only get the meaning of these words by 
taking from them the ecclesiastical setting and 
expressing them in our own phraseology." 
In my friend's notes I find these words also : 
"'I am the Way.' Jesus is speaking — 
speaking of himself. A quick way to know 
a man is to watch him when he is speaking 
about himself. Some cannot speak respectfully 
of themselves. Others talk themselves to those 
who have ears to hear. Listen to these ; they 
are like children, and deal with the truth. 

"Jesus often speaks of himself. No other 
religious teacher does so much of it. And yet 
one always feels that his thoughts are not with 
himself, but with those to whom he is giving 
himself helpfully. No one could call Jesus an 
egotist. There are teachers who have wonder- 
ful power in selecting beautiful thoughts and 
pictures out of the records of the past and 
passing them on to others. They have an 
instinct for ideals, and they build Utopias of 
them that make this dusty world seem uncom- 
fortable, and their intoxicated followers never 

[33] 



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THE RELIGION OF A 



get a sober view of life without turning 
pessimists. 

''Again, there are teachers who talk about 
life and what they get out of it ; who exhibit 
the handful of nuggets they have dug and tell 
where they found them. And as we listen 
we are aroused to dig, too. Their hopeful and 
successful lives quicken ours. Jesus belonged 
to this second class. There is a peculiar power 
in his ' I say unto you.' One feels that he has 
lived his words and that they can be lived. 
Solomon holds up ideals and precepts, but does 
not live them. And every view of Solomon 
we get through his words shows a pessimist 
whom life has soured. We feel like saying, 
' Solomon, take your own medicine ' ; ' Physi- 
cian, heal thyself.' The ideal of Jesus is him- 
self, and because he was so much of a man 
and dealt so much with commonplace things, 
we feel that we can do as he did. 

'' Precepts and rules of life and high ideals 
are useful as they mold and shape us while we 
behold them. They are food for action. They 
are not guides to life. Habits are guides to 
living, and habits are formed by doing. One 
cannot stop at every crossroad to consult a 
notebook for the proper precept. Men are 
neither trained nor saved by being preached 

[34] 



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SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

■ A^ , 



at. They seem to enjoy it, and often pay 
liberally for a weekly exhibition of beautiful 
ideals and well worded proverbs. These de- 
light and amuse them, as the bottles on the 
druggists' shelves amuse a child, but they 
make wry faces if asked to taste them. 

'' A patriarch, a preacher, who is surrounded 
by a family of men and women, said : ' I never 
tried to talk religion to my children but once. 
I got my little girl, one Sunday afternoon, and 
preached at her. Next week I said, " Come, 
let papa talk to you." She said, ''All right, 
papa ; but please do not talk as you did last 
Sunday.'" 

" Far more reaching than a father's words 
— and fathers are apt to be popes in their 
families — is a father's life ; and a mother is 
not a collection of fine sayings, but an eternal 
influence of finer acts. I have heard more 
than one mother mourn because she could not 
say the right thing, she who was all the time 
an incarnation, in her world of boys and girls, 
of the living God. Men and women are 
molded by the silent, constant influence of a 
home far more than by the daily scolding and 
advising. Morning prayers are a poor sub- 
stitute for a day of religion. A home saturated 
with peace and purity is the larger part of the 

135] 



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THE RELIGION OF A 



training of every child. Schools and univer- 
sities are extras to be added later." 

Another fragment is this : 

''One day, when Jesus was talking about 
God to his disciples, Philip interrupted him 
by asking, ' Lord, show us the Father and we 
will be satisfied/ And Jesus said to Philip, 
' Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
hast thou not known me ? The Father and I 
are so mixed, so amalgamated, that my loving 
is his loving; my goodness, his goodness; 
my wisdom, his wisdom. I am in the Father 
and the Father in me, and all these works that 
I am doing, we — the Father and I — are doing. 
The words I speak and the works I do are his 
works and words.' 

"This was the Master's way of quieting 
Philip's fears that he could not get near 
enough to God to feel at home with him. 
Jesus was conscious of God. He never de- 
fined him. He never sought to prove his 
existence or establish any doctrines about 
him. He assumed God, and talked about him 
as naturally as a boy talks about his father. 
When he was going about doing good, he 
unquestionably recognized that God was doing 
the same; so they worked together. I have 
noticed that a boy who occasionally takes 

[36] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



hold and helps me in something I am doing 
does not first ask for proof that I am his 
father, nor does he insist that some one point 
out the family likeness. He just takes hold 
and helps, or imagines he helps, and links 
himself to me by talking a great deal about 
our work and what we are doing. He just 
assumes that I am, and that our life is one, as 
it is. This is the way that Jesus acts. When 
he is working, he expects God to co-operate, 
and he does. When he is in trouble, he cries 
out for help, and it comes. When he is 
anxious about leaving the crude and unripe 
disciples alone in the world, he talks the 
whole situation over with his Father as natu- 
rally as if they were sitting together in the 
firelight before some family hearth stone. 
This wonderfully successful and ideal life 
that Jesus led received its whole explanation 
and impetus from this relationship between 
him and his God. We cannot read about it 
or study his life without believing that the 
relationship was real. Whether God did his 
part or not, we cannot escape the conclusion 
that Jesus lived and loved and served and 
died as he did because of his conviction that 
he and his Father were one, — one in spirit, 
in aim, in purpose. And when we think of 

[37] 



THK KHLIGION OF A 



the stupendous miracle of Christianily, when 
wc sec his principles abidini^, his life and 
spirit ^n\n[][ inlo all (he corners of the world, 
we nuisl believe Ihat God was with him, and 
he knew it. I( is thai which 'works/ which 
stands the tests of time and place, which has 
God with it ; and the everlastini^ life of Jesus 
is the stron,i(est proof we could have that his 
method of conscious participation wilh God's 
life is (he (rue way of livinj.^. 

** Let me choose out of your lives some of 
(he real thin,i(s, and ask you (o interpret them. 
Lc( us consider love. I choose this because the 
dccpcsl, tenderes( experiences of lite are associ- 
ated wilh i(. The best thini^^s (hat have come 
lo you have been brou^^ht by love, and you 
reco,i,Mu*/e yourself al your best when you are 
lovini(. Do you remember some time when 
you were in trouble, when perhaps you went 
near to (he brink of (he valley of shadows, 
when your arm needed s(reni,^(h and your 
heart sympathy ? And do you remember how 
(hey came ? I low stronj^^ hands jLj^ripped yours, 
how hearty words of cheer drove out your 
loneliness, how little acts muKiplied, un(il you 
were surrounded by lovini^-kindness and 
(ender mercies? We call (his friendship. It 

is God abroad in his world. He that hath 

_ 



-^^ 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



seen a friend hath seen God also. Do you 
remember those broken days of childhood, 
when f'you in many moods mixed good and 
bad in the mosaic of your growing life? 
When you were thoughtless, there was one 
who never forgot; when you were wrong, 
there was one who was always kind; when 
you were in tears, there was one who wept 
with you ; when you rejoiced, there was one 
who was glad. You call this sacred friend 
' Mother.' Is it possible that any of you 
have known a mother's love and yet know 
not God? He that hath seen a mother hath 
seen God also." 

In our curious little Anglo-Saxon fashion, 
every man in America, as in Great Britain, is 
ticketed as of some political and of some 
religious organization. It matters not how 
persistently he may scratch the party ticket, 
he is still numbered with the party, and in 
some states he is required annually to confess 
his faith, or else not to vote at the primaries. 
It matters not how consistently he may evade 
the means of salvation provided by his church, 
he can never quite outgrow the mark of its 
primitive label. All this is a result of heredity, 
a species of inherited knighthood through 
which we as Anglo-Saxons, and mostly in no 

[39] 



, — 5,^ 

THE RELIGION OF A 



other sense, join with the Shintoists in the 
worship of ancestors. " So live that men by 
your good deeds may know your ancestors" 
is a Shinto maxim. This we have changed 
to read : " Know the religion and politics of 
your ancestors by your nominal affiliations." 

In this fantastic Anglo-Saxon fashion my 
friend was ticketed as a Republican and a 
Methodist. The first need not concern us 
save that the name once stood for opposition 
to human slavery. As for the other, it was 
with him a name sacred to a mother's affec- 
tion, and as available as any other form of 
religion as the backbone of a wholesome 
human life. But the desire to bring others 
into the hereditary fold did not exist with 
my friend. If he were told that a hundred 
men had joined the Methodist Church, coming 
over from the Presbyterians, the Baptists, or 
the Catholics, it would have interested him 
no more than to be told that a hundred fine 
sheep had been driven across from Santa Cruz 
County into Santa Clara. If the hundred 
men had been reclaimed from a life of indiff'er- 
ence to the ideals of any of these churches, 
it would have been a matter for him to con- 
sider, especially if their faith bore fruitage 
in works. 

[40] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 2^ 

The size of an ecclesiastical organization 
was to him a matter of no real importance. 
If its numbers increase, probably its minis- 
trations serve the needs of the many. If 
the group persists, the reason may be that 
it meets more specialized needs. But in 
any event the question of numbers was one 
of no import to my friend, and he would 
be equally unmoved before the arguments 
derived from apostolic succession, from the 
significance of a Greek verb, or from the 
dictum of an infallible council. For it is only 
the truth which makes free, and the truth 
which was once hidden from the prophets is 
now sometimes at least revealed unto babes. 
There was to him no outside authority as to 
truth and practice, only the sanction which 
one sane action yields to the next. Nothing 
that is helpful to man can be displeasing to 
God. Neither can man "serve God with a 
lie." And his sincerity led my friend to look 
sometimes with overmuch distrust on the 
amenities of religious service. The austere 
Puritan mind is doubtful of the concourse of 
sweet sounds. It does not naturally worship 
its God in methods which appeal first of all to 
the eye and ear. Noble music yields sensuous 
pleasure rather than an impulse to move things 

[41] 



• S'^ 

THE RELIGION OF A 



and to change customs. Beauty of form or 
tone has h'ttle to do with the impulse to action. 
The noblest paintings in the world were given 
to adorn a house of worship. The finest music 
has the same inspiration. *' The groves were 
God's first temples," not unadorned, but 
beautiful in an austere fashion, their beauty 
not at the easy access of those who dwell in 
kings' houses. But our Puritan ancestors 
distrusted even this. Because of the riotous 
scarlet of the autumn woods of Massachusetts, 
according to Thoreau, these people on the 
hills " built meeting-houses and fenced them 
around with horse-sheds." 

It is not necessary to lay too much stress on 
these matters. Our fathers were iconoclasts 
and destroyed some images of beauty with 
the clay gods they hated. But my friend had 
a tolerance too broad to be a foe to beauty. 
It was to him not the first element in religion, 
nor the second, nor the third, but as an ex- 
pression of harmony in human life, a factor 
to be reckoned with and not despised. But 
he needed no ritual. The direct expression of 
individual feeling, however crude, has in it 
something that transcends perfection. The 
Oxford movement towards perfect expression 
would doubtless have seemed to him a move- 

[4^ 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



ment away from something to express. Broad 
Church he was and Low Church, and broad 
and low in this technical sense the American 
in his reh'gious ceremonials is likely ever to be. 
We may not claim this as a merit; it may 
even be a fault : but in any case it is a natural 
fault of democracy, and it is from the open 
level of democracy that greatness is surest to 
arise. For greatness never asks itself, What 
is the proper way to do this ? How was it 
done by those who did it last ? How should 
I comport myself to fall into the apostolic 
succession ? 

The gift of song was denied to my' friend. 
I know of but a single case in which he ex- 
pressed his thoughts in verse, but this verse 
is worth saving for the practical religion 
which is expressed in it. 

Oft in the dusty course it seems 
The face of him I am to meet 
Is dimmed before my straining eyes ; 
And silence answers to my cries — 
Silence and doubt my questions greet. 

Yet, pressing onward to my goal, 
Some breeze will blow the dust apart. 
T is dust my feet have raised that hides 
The Father's smile that e'er abides. 
The dust has changed, but not his Heart. 

[43] 



THE RELIGION OF A 

■ p^ 



The silence is my ignorance 
When reason seeks him to define. 
Life's mysteries are solved by life, 
And doubts that rise in anxious strife 
Before the Love of God decline. 

We seek in wordy phrase to paint 
The Unknown God to finite eyes. 
Our logic kills our charity, 
Our wisdom widens mystery, 
Our altars bear no sacrifice. 

Yet to the listening ear God speaks 
In myriad tongues on sea and shore, 
In childish prattle, mothers' songs, 
When prophets cry against men's wrongs. 
Or love knocks at some prison door. 

Faith bom of love and fed by hope 
Sees God where reason's eye is dim, 
And reason led by faith will prove 
So strong that doubts can never move, 
Nor clouds disturb our trust in him. 

Then courage, fainting one, take heart ; 
Thy God in clouds hides not his face. 
The veil is thine, thine is the fear. 
Withhold thy cries, list to his cheer, 
And onward press, fed by his grace. 

The religion of Jesus has no necessary 
connection with any Church. But the need 
of democracy to-day does not h'e in the direc- 
tion of minimizing the work or influence of 
the Church, nor of the churches, if we regard 

[44] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

■ ^^ , 



the individual groups as distinguished from 
the operations of the whole. 

For the Church is a natural adjustment of 
the desire to hold whatever of spiritual good 
the best of men have attained. In the words 
of Dr. Joseph H. Crooker, '' The world needs 
an institution organized by his spirit and filled 
with his influence, that men may be instructed 
in his gospel and trained to citizenship in the 
kingdom of love which he inaugurated. The 
necessity is not that we should have slavish 
disciples, blind followers or mere imitators of 
Jesus. A special institution is surely needed 
to provide a method by which his personal 
impulse may be brought to bear on human 
souls, and by which human beings may be 
trained to service under the authority of an 
equal love. The Church administers life 
to those in need because it is the servant of 
one whose heart abounded in love. The love 
which his heart felt and the love which 
our hearts need is the measure of what the 
Church is worth to humanity." 

A bit of wisdom is this, the last lines from 
my friend's pencil and never finished. 

'' A very large part of the intellectual class 
finds itself to-day between the horns of a 
dilemma. On the one hand, the mind is 

[45] 



^ THE RELIGION OF A 

dominated by inheritance and training until it 
identifies religion with its institutions, its dog- 
mas, its forms, its figures of speech ; on the 
other, this mind is trained by the methods 
and literature of the age to war with the insti- 
tutions of religion, to ignore her forms and 
reject her dogmas. 

"By this dilemma one who would be re- 
ligious is tempted to separate his religion from 
his intellectual life to the great disturbance 
of the former, or to close his eyes to what 
they see and distrust reason and experience 
so far as they lead him away from his faith. 
This is a form of intellectual dishonesty not 
so common now as a few years ago. By this 
same dilemma one who would be rational is 
tempted to hoodwink himself by imagining 
that he believes what he knows he doubts, 
or to classify himself as unreligious altogether 
because he is not like some people who say 
they believe what he must doubt, and who 
loudly affirm their own religion. The dilemma 
is not a new one, but to those whose expand- 
ing intellectual life leads them to it for the 
first time it is new and very real. Of these 
there are many in our midst. 

'' I believe that every man can and ought to 
be religious. I do not think he is a complete 

[46] 



^ 6 ' 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



man until he is religious. If you will accept 
my definition of religion, you will think so 
too. I cannot make you religious. I would 
not if I could. That is your part. Being is 
not born of hearing, but of doing. But I have 
learned some things in my experience with 
young men and women that have been very 
helpful to me and to others to whom I have 
given them. Some of these things I bring 
to you, hoping they may be needed. I like to 
bring to you the best my life gives me, and 
the best thing out of my experience is that the 
life that Jesus lived is the best life for any 
man or woman. People do not readily believe 
this. When we remember how quickly men 
throw away old things for newer and better, 
how rapidly new inventions are adopted the 
world over, we can but wonder that the best 
life has so slowly commended itself to the race. 
But I think we are beginning to see that the 
world has had but imperfect and few glimpses 
of the real life of Jesus. An artificial, man- 
made Jesus, constructed of Greek philosophy. 
Oriental mysticism, and Roman legalism, has 
grown *up between the real Jesus and a 
harassed people who yet instinctively feel that 
there is a living being within the mass of stuff 
associated with his name. 

[47] 



THE RELIGION OF A 



" With most people to-day the terms Chris- 
tianity and Religion are synonymous. Even 
the Jew of to-day will speak of the civilization 
which he himself has so well helped to build 
as a Christian civilization. The adjective 
Christian and the term Christianity are used 
to designate and define that movement which, 
wider than any church, broader than any creed, 
has carried our moral and social and intellectual 
life far in advance of that of any other age. 
Even men who would rather believe like 
Buddha or Confucius prefer to live like 
Christians. Christianity is one of the very 
few universal things in the world to-day, 
until we seek to define it — then Babel ensues. 
Now the reason for this confusion and lack 
of agreement is the fact that men do not base 
their definitions upon the reality, but upon 
deductions and doctrines which from their very 
nature can never be tested by experience. 

''This confusion of tongues has turned 
many true men and women away from Chris- 
tianity. Go to them and say, in Jesus' name, 
'Well done, good and faithful servant; you 
are a Christian,' and they will answer, ' I never 
was baptized, never joined the church, never 
recited the creed, and never said. Lord, Lord.' 
Then you may answer, ' But I was hungry,' 

[48] 



-"^r^- — • 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

-*^ . — 



and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty, and ye 
gave me drink. I was a stranger (homesick 
and lonely), and ye took me into your home. 
I was naked, and ye clothed me. I was sick, 
and ye visited me. I was in prison, and ye 
came unto me.' This kingdom is made of 
such as these. If we would use Jesus' test 
of a Christian and separate the men-serving 
sheep from the do-nothing goats, there are 
not enough churches in this world to house 
the host of Christians, not even allowing for 
the church space that the goats would have 
to vacate. 

"It is pathetic to see how the world is 
struggling toward the Christian ideals almost 
in spite of the great institutions which have 
so long stood as the representatives of Christ. 
The pulpit no longer has a monopoly in pro- 
claiming the truth. The truest religious life 
finds expression now in a thousand ways that 
have not yet been adopted by any institution. 

" For the Church this means that it loses 
that great body of true and earnest men who 
do not recognize their ideal of humanity in it. 
But for many of these true and earnest men, 
lovers of their fellows, it means that they 
classify themselves as heretics and outcasts 
and unreligious. This in itself does not make 

[49] 



^ THE RELIGION Of'a 

them so except so far as a man unconsciously 
lives up to the reputation he makes for himself. 
Custom has so identified religion with its 
institutions in our minds that it is difficult 
to think of one without the other. It is a 
sign of vitality when a man inside of a church 
or outside recognizes his religion as his life, 
independent of any means of expression. The 
commendation *Well done' will give certain 
self-approval to any one who faithfully works 
with the trend of things, but it will come 
sooner if he knows he has a right to expect it. 
Many people come to know Jesus by their 
righteous lives who would never know him 
through what often seems to them the fantastic 
and irrational processes of Christian institu- 
tions. Kindness and sympathy and mercy and 
love are eternal graces and know their kind 
wherever found, and are known by them. 
: '' But must I not believe this or that about 
God or Jesus before I am religious? Most 
certainly not ; only so much as finds response 
in your own life. It is only that part of God 
or Jesus that we can appropriate, assimilate, 
and recognize as possible and attainable in 
our own lives that is of any use to us. 

'' Oh that religion might be put upon a more 
natural and commonplace basis ! So much of 

[50] 



-^^ — i 

SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



the supernatural as is not founded on our 
daily experiences or suggested by our living 
might be removed. 

''The instinct of w^orship is indestructible 
in man's nature. Religion is the activity of 
our sympathies, the feeding of our hopes, the 
strengthening of our knowledge of the trend 
of things. Men worship best together, but 
they philosophize best alone. But you say, 
' If I believe a part of Jesus' life, must not I 
believe it all?' No. Your life is founded 
upon so much of truth as you apprehend; 
the rest is mystery to you, and whatever 
your attitude toward it, you do not keep it to 
live with." 

The historic church, whatever may be our 
view of the infallibility of its guiding spirit, 
has never been infallible in the details of its 
deeds. Its outlying labors are the works of 
men with all the faults of men, cruelty, care- 
lessness, injustice, and prejudice to which 
men and groups of men are prone. It is easy 
enough to find in the same church, in any 
church at any time, almost every extreme 
in the range of human character or action, 
whether individual or collective. St. Vincent 
de Paul and the Duke of Alva were not far 
apart in the church relations. The same 

[51] 



-^ 



^^ THE RELIGION OF A 

church, any church, to-day is the shelter of 
the clerical renegade or the commercial bandit 
as well as the hard-working saint. 

" The Defenders of the Faith," says Charles 
Ferguson, '' have made it hard to believe. . . . 
The cruelest men have been makers of empires, 
as Napoleon and Philip II, excepting only 
the makers of churches, as Torquemada and 
Calvin. God will have sons. And the 
twentieth century belongs neither to the 
priests nor to the politicians." 

Large or small, time-honored or temporary, 
each organization of men must justify itself by 
its influence on human life. There are no 
chosen people save those who have chosen 
themselves. The "God of things as they 
are " recognizes no *' privileged corporations," 
and with him "the traditions of a thousand 
years are but as the hearsay of yesterday." 

This allegory is from the pen of William 
Lowe Bryan: 

" In London I saw two pictures. One was 
of a woman. You would not mistake it for 
any of the Greek goddesses. It had a splendor 
and majesty such as Phidias might have given 
to a woman Jupiter. But not terrible. The 
culmination of the awful beauty was in an 
expression of matchless compassion. If there 

[52] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN ji 

had been other figures they must have been 
suffering humanity at her feet. 

" The other was also of a woman. Whose 
face it is hard to say. Not the Furies, not 
Lady Macbeth, not Catherine de Medici, not 
Philip the Second, not Nero, not any face you 
have ever seen, but a gathering up from all 
the faces you have seen — the greatness, the 
splendor, the savagery, the greed, the pride, 
the hate, the mercilessness, into one colossal, 
terrifyingly Satanic woman face. The first 
was clothed in simple, soft, white robe; the 
other in a befitting tragic splendor, mostly 
blood-red. I looked from one to the other. 
What immeasurable distance between them! 
What single point have they in common? 
But as I look back and forth I seem to see 
a certain similarity. It grows upon me. I 
am credulous. I am appalled. Then one 
touches me and whispers: 'They are the 
same. It is the Church.' In London I saw 
this — in the air." 

These same two pictures, the red Church and 
the white, I saw myself not many years ago, 
the one at Rotterdam, the other in the Pennine 
Alps. At the corner of the market place at 
Rotterdam there stood, for three hundred years, 
a tall house which bore over its door this 

[53] 



' 5^^ 

THE RELIGION OF A 



inscription: IN DUIZEND VREEZEN, ''In a thou- 
sand terrors." In the last decade, which has 
swept away historic Rotterdam, leaving a new, 
clean, and quite uninteresting city, this house 
has been torn down. But for a long time it 
stood as a memory of the bitterness of religious 
conflict. When the Spanish troops ravaged 
the Netherlands, a band of Dutch Protestants 
gathered in this house. They killed a number 
of goats, piled them up behind the door, which 
they left ajar, while the blood of the beasts 
flowed out over the lintels. When the Spanish 
troops came to this door they saw the blood 
and felt their carcasses as they pushed against 
the door. Then they passed by, for it seemed 
that in this house all deeds of murder were 
already accomplished. Inside the people passed 
the night in a thousand terrors, and later it 
became a historic monument, with its pointed 
gables, sagging roof, and little round win- 
dows as if made of the bottoms of bottles, 
and the name of the house was IN DUIZEND 

VREEZEN. 

This was the red work of the red Church. 
There is the white one also, and the two are 
one and the same. The long road from Aosta 
in Italy, by Saint Remy, to Martigny in Swit- 
zerland, leads over the high mountain pass 

[54] 



SENSIBLE AMERICAN ^ 



where a thousand years ago the Saracen brig- 
ands held sway and made human sacrifices 
in the worship of ''Jupiter Pen/' Here in 
those days the young priest, Bernard de 
Menthon, whom they now call Saint, drove 
out the brigands, destroyed the statue of 
Jupiter, and set in its place the hospice 
which we now call the Great Saint Bernard. 
This hospice stands in a mountain pass of the 
sternest kind, the center of rain and wind in 
the summer, of whirling storms of snow and 
blasts of boundless violence all through the 
ice-bound winter. The peasants of that re- 
gion are forced to cross this pass in the 
rounds of their migratory labors, and it is 
the work of monks and dogs of St. Bernard 
to make this journey possible. 

Soon after leaving Rotterdam I crossed this 
pass on an August day, but in the face of a 
suffocating storm. Many travelers came over 
the mountain that day. Among them were 
a man and his wife, Italian peasants who had 
been over the mountains to spend a day or 
two with friends in some village on the Swiss 
side, and were now returning home. Man 
and woman were dressed in their peasants' 
best, and with them was a little girl, some 
four years old. The child carried a toy horse 

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in her hands, the gift of some friend below. 
As they toiled up the steep path in the blind- 
ing snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed 
only for summer, they were chilled through 
and through, while the child was almost 
frozen. The monks came out to meet them, 
took the child in their arms, and brought her 
and her parents to the fire, covered her shoul- 
ders with a warm shawl, touched the toy horse 
gently, as though it were a holy image, and 
sent them down the mountain to their home 
in the valley, warmed and filled. 

This was a simple act, of course, an act of 
every day, a duty of the outlying fringe of the 
white Church, which cares for the sick and 
the poor. But red Church and white Church, 
in all their ramifications, each is a necessary 
part in the struggle of humanity to actualize 
the teachings of Jesus. 

The religious philosophy of the active Amer- 
ican tends unconsciously toward testing all 
truth by its availability for action. Each doc- 
trine must work itself out in terms of life. The 
test of truth is this : Can we trust our lives to 
it? If we trust in any way, in the long run it 
is our life which we risk. Whatever will work 
in the conduct of life strengthening it, enrich- 
ing it, giving it a higher trend, must, so far as 

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it goes, have elements of truth. If it were not 
true it would not work. It would not long 
continue even to seem to work. But these 
human theories or conceptions are never sim- 
ple or pure. Error is always mixed with the 
truth, and error is not livable. It cannot be 
wrought into the elements of sound and whole- 
some life. Wrong belief is more dangerous 
than incomplete belief, for all truth stated in 
human terms must be left incomplete. We 
can never finish the equation. That a form of 
religion favors sobriety, develops charity, and 
yields consolation in time of trouble proves 
that there is truth in it. But it does not prove 
that it is all true, or that any of its distinctive 
characters are true, or that truth or even 
virtue animated its founders. It is the busi- 
ness of science and of philosophy, which is 
the logic of science, to purify these concepts, 
to separate from the mass those elements on 
which the conduct of life may rest. 

*' We will tread the floors of hell if need be,'' 
says Dr. William M. Salter, '* rather than hocus- 
pocus ourselves into believing it is heaven. 
We will face reality and by long facing it, 
and above all working in it, we may, under 
the surface and the scum, detect traces of 
heaven in it; not traces that we put there, 

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God forbid, but that are there, immanent, 
struggling, and destined yet to transform the 
whole/' 

In emotionalism as such my friend finds 
no necessary aid to religion. Not how we 
feel, but to what line of conduct do our feel- 
ings lead. Love is not love unless it contains 
the impulse of renewed life. It must purify 
itself by action. '' If thou lovest me, feed my 
lambs." There is no other evidence. There 
is no other way in which emotion can impinge 
on religion. "Sensations," says my friend, 
" are within the reach of all." Preachers deal 
with them sometimes. Our rituals and our 
choirs give them. There are books that pile 
up great waves of emotion in us, almost as 
real as if we had earned them. I have read 
of battles so vividly portrayed that my cold 
blood grew hot and I felt like a hero. I cooled 
down, a little more weary than before; that 
was all. I have listened to great preachers 
who talked so familiarly of holy things and 
made them so real that earth has seemed dreary 
when I touched it again. Emotions are dan- 
gerous things unless they find an outlet in 
action. We can so narcotize ourselves with 
holy things that our senses will lie to us. We 
can meditate on holy things until we feel that 

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we are holy too. But periods of rude awak- 
ening* come. We find we have been hearing 
and not doing; saying Lordl Lord! and not 
doing God's will. 

" Exercise the angel ; never wait to exorcise 
the devil. No animal lives for itself, nor is 
allowed to live for itself. Nature executes 
drones. Until a man has learned to give and 
to train himself for giving, to work for others, 
to plan and study for others, to live for others, 
and spend himself for others, and save nothing 
for himself, nature exacts pound after pound 
of flesh until only enough remains to make a 
fossil. Men groan over a tenth. The God of 
nature exacts all. Our nature exacts all. Use 
it, or lose it. All your learning, achievement, 
discovery, your good times, your blessed ex- 
periences, have not found the reason for their 
existence until you touch the heart of humanity. 
Our hands may lose all we give — our hearts 
lose nothing." 

My friend once told to his students this 
parable of ''The Holy Shadow." Whether 
original with him or not his notes do not 
tell us: 

'* Long, long ago there lived a saint so good 
that the astonished angels came down from 
heaven to see how a mortal could be so godly. 

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He simply went about his daily life, diffusing 
virtue as the star diffuses light and the flower 
perfume, without even being aware of it. 
Two words summed up his day : he gave, he 
forgave. Yet these words never fell from his 
lips; they were expressed in his ready smile, 
in his kindness, forbearance, and charity. 

'' The angels said to God, ' O Lord, grant 
him the gift of miracles!' God replied, 'I 
consent ; ask him what he wishes.' 

"So they said to the saint: 'Should you 
like the touch of your hands to heal the sick ? ' 
'No,' answered the saint; 'I would rather 
God should do that' 'Should you like to 
convert guilty souls and bring back wander- 
ing hearts to the right path?' 'No; that is 
the mission of angels. I pray ; I do not con- 
vert.' 'Should you like to become a model 
of patience, attracting men by the lustre of 
your virtues and thus glorifying God ? ' ' No,' 
replied the saint ; ' if men should be attached 
to me, they would become estranged from 
God. The Lord has other means of glorifying 
himself.' ' What do you desire then ? ' cried 
the angels. ' What can I wish for ? ' asked the 
saint, smiling. ' That God gives me his grace; 
with that shall I not have everything?' 

" But the angels insisted : ' You must ask 

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for a miracle, or one will be forced upon you/ 
* Very well/ said the saint; 'that 1 may do a 
great deal of good without ever knowing it ! * 

" The angels were greatly perplexed. They 
took council together and resolved upon this 
plan- Every time the saint's shadow should 
fall behind him or at either side, so that he 
could not see it, it should have the power to 
cure disease, soothe pain, and comfort sorrow. 

*'And so it came to pass, when the saint 
walked along, his shadow, thrown on the 
ground on either side or behind him, made 
arid paths green, caused withered plants to 
bloom, gave clear water to dried-up brooks, 
fresh color to pale little children, and joy to 
unhappy mothers. 

*' But the saint simply went about his daily 
life, diffusing virtue as the star diffuses light 
and the flower perfume, without even being 
aware of it. And the people, respecting his 
humility, followed him silently, never speaking 
to him about his miracles. Little by little, 
they even came to forget his name, and called 
him only ' The Holy Shadow.' '' 

'' The word of God is life," says Oscar 
Carleton McCulloch, a kindred spirit who 
has in like fashion interpreted the religion of 
action. ''The word of God is life. M am 

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come that they might have life/ says Jesus, 
' and that they might have it more abundantly/ 
Life, not salvation. Salvation is a word that 
Jesus never used. I am come that men may 
live, may enjoy their life, may find out what 
powers are in their hearts and what faculties 
in their minds, what relation they sustain to 
the great power above, our Father; what is 
their business here, how they may help the 
broken, and how they may lift the fallen. ' I 
am come that they might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly.' God 
is not here repairing and restoring things 
alone. Preventive medicine is rapidly dis- 
placing remedial medicine. Where of old 
seventy-two different elements entered into that 
which was to give life to those that were sick, 
preventive medicine anticipates the need and 
to-day asks. How shall we prevent loss of life 
and keep men and women from being ill ? 

*' I take it that the work of law in this world 
is not simply disentangling the confusions of 
men, not simply winning a case for this man 
and punishing that man ; but it is the endeavor 
to institute justice between man and man, to 
so state the principles of social order that men 
shall not quarrel and men shall not err. I 
understand the work of government is no 

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longer simply to protect a man while he 
pushes his plane or swings his scythe or 
stands behind his counter, but to see to it that 
all shall have the privileges of each; to see to 
it that the weakest has not only justice, but 
opportunity. Preventive government is to 
take the place of the old protective govern- 
ment. I understand the great work of reform 
to-day is not simply to relieve those that are 
hungry, is not simply to confine those that 
have done wrong, but to heal, to help, to place 
a man on his feet again, to anticipate the fall- 
ing of little children, and long before they are 
neglected to have gathered them into some 
home and pressed them to some mother's or 
father's bosom, that love may so protect them 
and may so prevent their knowledge of evil 
that they shall not go wrong. 

" I understand God's business in this world 
is not salvation alone ; that is a little part of it. 
It is not restoration alone ; that is but a phase 
of it. It is not repair ; that is a small portion 
of it. But it is utilizing all the forces that are 
as yet unlimited and unexhausted, that chil- 
dren shall be born to happy homes and joyful 
parents ; shall be so surrounded by education 
and by the conditions of a happier and purer 
society that they shall not go astray, that they 

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shall not fall into evil, that they shall have no 
taint of sin upon them. There shall be no need 
of their being born twice, since God's first 
birth is good enough for all and suffices for 
all, if nothing comes to prevent the perfect 
development of his plan. 

'* This is God's business in the world. This 
is that on which he works night and day. 
We sleep, but the forces of nature never sleep. 
We dream, but there is no dreaming in the 
restless, quiet energy of God. We make 
spasmodic effort and put forth feverish power, 
but all that God works ' is effortless and calm. 
High on his throne above, in loftiest ray 
serene, there, though we know not how, he 
works his quiet will.' ' All great work,' says 
Ruskin, ' is easily done.' One cannot conceive 
the immense mind of Shakespeare ever stopping 
to ask what he shall say next. He moves, the 
most gigantic of human minds, over the world, 
interpreting the little meanness of Christopher 
Sly, penetrating the mind of lago, entering 
the sublime sorrow of Lear, and understanding 
the immense power of Othello. 

'' Here is the conception of the universe as 
God's place of business, with organism and 
system and science; employment of power 
and engagement and adaptation of the littlest 

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things to the largest issues. This is the work 
in which we have our part and place. Each 
of us fits in somewhere ; to us the question of 
place and use is the supreme question. Why 
are you troubled, says Jesus, about questions 
of food and clothing and shelter; your 
Heavenly Father knows all about these things 
and has provided for them: for you the 
supreme question of life is. Where is my place 
and what is my work? Seek ye first place 
and use and all things will be added." 

That is a noble sentence of the litany, 
"Whose service is perfect freedom." This 
is perhaps the finest test of religion. To do 
the one thing best worth doing from day 
to day is to make constantly better things 
possible. It is to make us daily more and 
more free. It is wrong-doing which ties up 
a man, doing each day the second best, the 
third best, the worst possible thing for him 
to do. The man who refuses to tie himself 
up to small things is always ready for large 
ones. It is truth which makes free. It is 
righteousness that enlarges our borders, that 
widens our coasts. 

As to this, I heard my friend tell this story 
— a part of his experience as a naturalist in 
Mexico : 

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*M stood one sunny day on a coral reef 
in the harbor of Vera Cruz. The hazy blue 
air was full of sunshine and the healthy 
odors of the sea. Birds were tumbling about 
overhead in the perfect abandon of strength 
and room and tropical comfort. The white 
rocks and blue sea were mixing in a line of 
fleecy foam until the coral seemed to flow 
away on the wave crests. It was a perfect 
day, such as God sends us often when he lets 
heaven down to rest on earth for a little while. 
At my feet was a square hole cut out of the 
rock. Across it were bars of iron. I put my 
face down, and when my eyes became accus- 
tomed to the darkness below, I could see human 
forms there, men in chains, standing in water 
ankle deep, with the ocean ceaselessly pound- 
ing overhead, its hoarse laugh reminding them 
that they would be thrown to the sharks when 
they were dead. I could see their haggard 
faces turned up toward the little barred square 
of light, which was all of the great free outside 
world they could see. Since that day that 
Mexican prison has been the background 
against which I have set my ideal of freedom. 
Chained hand and foot, enclosed by rocky 
walls, dependent upon their masters for food 
and drink and air and life, these men were slaves . 

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"And yet not all slaves are in chains or 
behind prison bars. Standing beside me in 
the group that looked into that dismal hole was 
a young American. He seemed free. He could 
go where he pleased. He could gratify his 
appetites and desires. He was on his way to 
his Northern home, to wed a pure-hearted girl 
who was waiting for him there. He read me 
from one of her letters, and one could see that 
he was her ideal of manhood. Yet the night 
before he spent in a Vera Cruz brothel. The 
purity he was taking home to his betrothed 
was only acted. His manhood was only on 
the surface. The truth was not in him. He 
was afraid lest he should seem to be what 
he was. He was chained by his sins and 
imprisoned by the wall of falsehood he had 
built around himself until he walked the 
paths of truth only in great fear lest the 
rattle of his secret chains would reveal his 
captivity. 

'* A man is not always free when he seems 
to do as he pleases. It depends on what he 
pleases to do. Nor are outward chains the 
only badge of slavery. It is true that wherever 
Jesus has gone emancipation has followed. 
* Imperialism has given way to democracy, 
and slavery to free labor.' Peter slept in 

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prison, and an angel came and set him free ; 
but this is not the way the freemen of Jesus 
are liberated. No angel touches the sleeping 
prisoner that the chains may drop from his 
galled wrists, but a divine strength has been 
imparted to the bondman until, like Samson, 
he has risen from his slumber and shaken 
himself, and his withes have parted like tow 
in the flames. The reformation of Jesus has 
been peculiar in this : it has reformed men by 
making them strong enough to reform them- 
selves. The angel came in the night and 
touched Peter, and his chains fell ofi' and he 
was free. This is the old way of liberating. 
The spirit of Christ Jesus in Paul made him 
victor over his own baser nature and set him 
free from the despotism of his own folly and 
the mastership of the Evil One. That is Jesus' 
way. His reformation is from the inside out. 
Man becomes a partner in the process." 

And therefore the sensible American is per- 
suaded that the religion of Jesus is an adequate 
religion, that never in the history of the world 
was it more alive or more potent, and that 
every movement of civilization, from the study 
of the lilies, the care for little children, the 
healing of the sick, and the casting out of 
devils from church and from state has been 



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along lines laid down by him, by the devotion 
of men for those things for which he cared. 

With all this what shall we say of immor- 
tality ? The idea of eternal life as well as that 
of life unblemished is in the teachings of Jesus. 
It is everywhere taken for granted. Our friend 
does not ask for immortality as a debt due him 
from the Creator. In this good world he has 
had his rewards and punishments, each suffi- 
cient for the day thereof. He asks no final 
compensation for dreary and dispiriting ser- 
vice. He has known no such service. His 
"times are in God's hands," the same God 
that "each day instantly and constantly re- 
neweth the work of creation." He is sure of 
personal immortality if in the economy of the 
universe that phase of eternal life for him be 
worth while. If immortality is not inevitable, 
it is no part of his religion to crave it or to 
demand it. He realizes the futility of an ap- 
peal to Science. Science can have no answer 
to this question. Science is human experience 
tested and set in order. We who are mortal 
have had no experience of immortality to 
which any of our mechanical tests can apply. 
I find in my friend's notes no mention of 
the finally impenitent, no speculation as to 
the abode of the wicked, no balancing of 

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rewards and punishments. To be busy with 
the Father's work, be the time long or short, 
that is reward enough ; and whether the way 
has been smooth or rough, that is a minor 
question. The more severe the test, the greater 
the strength which has hammered out victory. 
As for punishment, failure carries its own. 
To be nothing, to have done nothing, to be 
at one with no force in the universe, to have 
helped no one, to have loved no one, all this 
is the penalty of nonentity, and it needs no 
added horrors. 

To my friend ease is akin to selfishness. 
Rest is well for him who has earned it, but 
only as a prelude to more activity. He found 
little to interest him in the remedies for ner- 
vous exhaustion which consist in enforced 
belief that all things are alike unreal, and that 
because nothing is real, disease, deformation, 
and sin are alike non-existent. The essential 
selfishness of the serenity cultivated in this 
fashion always impressed him. What we need 
for effective life is more faith in our environ- 
ment, not less. More faith in reality of matter 
and force and more faith in the power of the 
human soul to stand above it. We need not 
belittle the power of the strong god Circum- 
stance, but the God we worship is a stronger 

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god. So long as " I and my Father are one," 
so long do I stand in a majority with the 
Universe. 

So my friend found in robust action in help- 
ing others the remedy for exhaustion of spirit. 
Futile emotion, idle aspiration, " rose pink sen- 
timentalism which never was and never can 
be woven into action," these had no part in 
his religious philosophy. Alive, awake, ready 
to act and ready to help, this was his measure 
of a man. To the weak and poor, the broken 
and the feeble, action must show its gentle 
side ; but my friend had no sympathy with a 
final gospel of feebleness. The distemper of 
anasmia he would never accept as religion. 

"Whether," says Robert Louis Stevenson, 
" we look justly for years of health and vigor, 
or are about to mount a bath chair as a step 
toward a hearse, there is but one conclusion 
possible, that a man should stop his ears against 
paralyzing terror and run the race that is before 
him with a single mind." 

This word is from Oscar McCulloch : 

" I tell you, when a man comes to God at 
last, having stood, God must look upon him 
very much as we look upon the soldiers that 
came back from the war, dusty, ragged, worn, 
sunburned, and limping along; but they had 

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Stood. That war seemed such a h'ttle thing in 
1861, when the call was made and so many 
thousands leaped forward to say, 'Yes; we 
will go,' and shouted 'On to Richmond,' 
and it was thought to be only a week's hur- 
ried work. But the weeks rolled out into 
years and years, and the obstructions came; 
there were doubts and uncertainties of prin- 
ciple as well as of issue; there was failure 
and defeat. All that, but still they stood. 
'Having done all, stand/ We have to do it 
in life. Who knows the w^ay through life 
from beginning to end? If such there be, 
some fortunate one, I cannot say that I envy 
him, but 1 know I wonder at him. God's 
conquerors have not come out of this life 
with burnished armor and floating plume. 
No ; with dented armor and broken helm and 
bruised body they have come. They have 
not heard the playing of trumpets and seen 
the floating of welcoming banners. Many 
of them have had to die in the dark, saying : 
* My God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' 

"I have lived through these things. That 
is why I can talk about them. There is not a 
footstep here that I have not pressed with my 
own foot, and I dare say that many who are 
here can say the same thing. Let us under- 

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stand it and take it as it is. With what we 
believe to be the universe on our side, then 
barrenness of nature, unloveliness of sugges- 
tion, bitter oppositions of men, and the cloud- 
ing and uncertainty of the issue, count for 
but little. 

"Let us stand in righteousness and truth 
and peace with other men. As is our hope, 
so is our belief that there is a God on whose 
side we work and who has ability to help us ; 
we believe there is an expansion as well as an 
extension of life beyond. How proudly shall 
they come in at the last who have fought the 
good fight and have finished their course and 
have kept their faith. Oh, he leads them by 
ways that they have not known." 

The arguments of philosophy can have for 
us no finality. We have only the certainty of 
man's experience, from which no reasoning 
may expand. The only philosophy which can 
be trusted has its roots in science. We know 
no truth save that which arises from human 
experience, and this truth is, at best, seen only 
in part as " through a glass darkly." The out- 
lines in this " dimly lighted room " of human 
consciousness philosophy endeavors to restore. 
She would see the phenomena about us, not 
with the partial and subjective vision of man, 

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but as with the eye of the Infinite Being. She 
would know things as they really are, but she 
cannot, because only through our imperfect 
senses, the basis of science, can we know 
objective things at all. Outside the field of 
knowledge and of reason, outside of science and 
of philosophy, lies the belief in immortality. 
**Life, like a dome of many-colored glass," 
says Shelley, "stains the white radiance of 
eternity." 

Let us listen to our friend as he gives us 
the basis of his belief. "No fact is actually 
known unless it is stated in mathematical 
terms, and with questions such as this no 
demonstration is possible. Attempts to dem- 
onstrate degrade the truth. Before you can 
prove it, you must first bring it down out of 
the region where things require no proof to 
the level of common things that can be proved. 
You may know a stone or a bit of metal ; you 
will never weigh love. 

"Immortality is not proved by Nature. 
Nature is full of suggestions and analogies, 
but analogies prove nothing. Homologies 
prove. If we can trace a fundamental iden- 
tity between any element of our character 
and the nature of God, if we can find in the 
beneficent heart of God a homology to the 

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heart of man, we have commenced to build 
the demonstration of the fact of immortality. 

*'So if 1 appear to destroy the heaven of 
your dreams, let me try to show you that in 
its place may be put a heaven which knows 
no present or future. 

" If man is ever to be an immortal being, he 
is such when he begins to live his divinity. 
If you have risen to that height where you 
feel sure that you know God in this world 
and in your life and in the lives of your 
fellows, be very sure that you know your 
own immortality. 

'* How did Jesus view this question ? He 
offers no proof of immortality, but simply 
assumes it. He talks much about love, faith, 
obedience, prayer. He might have shown that 
each presupposes immortality, but he did not. 
Life was so real to him that the thought of its 
ending never occurred to him. He was alive, 
and that meant alive forever. Death was only 
an incident connected with man's body, and 
to Jesus man was not a body, but a soul — 
using matter for a while, but not identified 
with it. 

" If his life had been to any extent identified 
with matter, we might have expected him to 
fear death ; for we know perfectly that death 

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will separate us from material things. But 
he loved things in men that death could not 
touch; and he lived and worked with char- 
acters, not bodies. So he wasted no time in 
reasoning about things that are not to be set- 
tled by reason. He assumed God, and God is. 
To demonstrate immortality would have been 
to him irrelevant. He was alive, forever, self- 
evident. He assumed it and built his whole 
teaching on that assumption. 

'' Do you say that assumption is no proof ? 
It is a statement of conviction. The biologist 
is convinced that there is such a thing as life ; 
he assumes it, and works upon that assump- 
tion. So Jesus assumes that man is ^//-mortal. 
He does not speak of life hereafter ; life is now 
— now and forever. Life and eternal life are 
the same. The important thing with him was 
not that man might through much suffering 
and trial weather the storms of life and then 
have an easy course through all eternity. The 
vital point with him was that man should not 
postpone his life until after his own funeral, 
but should begin his eternity now. 

'' So he sought to give meaning to life. Not 
knowledge, nor power, nor riches, nor position, 
but character. And then life begins to be 
true; it announces itself as eternal to the 

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mind. When a man begins to live — love, 
deny himself, serve — he understands what 
life is and knows that death cannot touch it. 
But all these activities are what may be called 
spiritual activities. When the spiritual nature 
is brought into exercise, it generates not only 
faith in eternal life, but reasons for it. 

"In proportion as man's life is identified 
with things that change and decay is his faith 
weakened. But if one's ideals are in the realm 
of character, death is not one of their attributes. 
Faith has a wonderful assimilating power ; we 
are like what we believe. By this principle 
Jesus unites himself to men. Fellowship 
brings likeness, and likeness means that we 
take ourselves his attitude toward life. What 
was his attitude ? Love. To the lawyer who 
tempted him, Jesus answered, 'Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, 
and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour 
as thyself. This do, and thou shalt live.' 
This is another way of saying that life is love, 
and love is life eternal. Only he who loves 
lives. Wisdom is vain unless our knowledge 
is turned into love. 

*' Love for men — and this soon passes into 
love for God — lifts man above the physical, 

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where death is, into the spiritual life ever- 
lasting." 

We may, then, strive toward a religion 
which shall be not collective alone, but per- 
sonal ; not the religion of a time or state, but 
of a man ; not one of creed nor of ceremony 
nor of emotion, not primarily a religion of the 
intellect, but a religion of faith and cheer, 
of love and action, of trust in the realities of 
nature and in the reality of the spirit, a faith 
that the universe is in hands of perfect 
wisdom and that in our way we may be at 
one with it, striving toward abounding life 
and helping our brother organisms as we 
meet them to struggle toward all good 
things. 

Dr. McCulloch quotes from a Persian phil- 
osopher : '' Divinities of worship had divided 
mankind into seventy-two religions ; from all 
their dogmas I select one — divine love." 
And the test of love is its impulse to action. 
"Cheerful and hopeful to do life's business." 
If this defines our religion, its truth will be 
shown in our works. 

My friend ended an address to his students 
with these words : 

'' Ye men of Stanford, I perceive that in all 
things you are somewhat religious. But you 

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SENSIBLE AMERICAN 



have reasoned about God's power and have 
studied his laws until you have ceased to feel 
your likeness to him, and have written over 
your altar the inscription, ' To the unknown 
God/ And the altar bears no sacrifice. What, 
therefore, ye worship as agnostics, declare I 
unto you, the God that made the world and 
all things therein, he being Lord of heaven 
and earth, giveth to all life and breath and all 
good things, and is not far from each one of 
us. For in him we live and move and have 
our being. When man loves and serves, it is 
the child endeavoring to be like its father. 
When man longs for greater, nobler, truer 
things, it is the son recognizing his relation 
to the Parent. 

"Out of your lives take the love and 
sympathy, the purity, the truth, the tender 
things, and all that grows into larger life, and 
put these on the cold altar of your heart ; then 
cut out those empty, lonely words, 'To an 
unknown God,' and write ' Our Father.' And 
bow before him ; for this is your God, and he 
will not withhold any good thing from you if 
you walk uprightly." 

Of the many tributes to my friend's memory, 
the Phi Beta Kappa poem, by one of his 
students, is the most worthy. It is entitled 

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THE RELIGION OF A 
9^ 



PRAYER 

BY CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD 

"y4/; well-a-day, what evil looks 
Had I from old and young; 
Instead of the Cross the Albatross 
About my neck was hung; . . . 
/ looked to Heaven and tried to pray, 

But or ever a prayer gusht, 
A wicked whisper came and made 
My heart as dry as dust'' 



There is a season of high-hearted song, 

The vocal glory of the greening spring, 
When life stirs up through music, pulsing strong 

Toward the hushed wonder of its blossoming ; 
No meditation softens this clear tone 

That rings with newly-wakened consciousness, 
The tingling upward impulse asks alone 

Expression, and the song is purposeless 
Save that perhaps some thrill of mystery 

Lies at the roots of life, an unguessed hour 
Felt in the lifting leaves, a prophecy 

Locked in the promise of the folded flower. 
As yet along the stalks the tender green 

That the fond roots first ushered to the light 
Remains, although an urgency unseen 

Compels division to release the slight 
Brave colors of the buds that must have way ; 

And where the new leaves spread old leaves appear, 
Caught in the stalks' uprising where they lay, — 

Dead straws that linger from the parent year. 

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Over the hills the free winds blow, 
The lithe stalks bend and the old leaves go, 
And the young plants shiver a little as though 
They miss the touch they are wont to know, 
And a sense, somehow, of loss and wrong 
Bears heavily at the heart of song. 



Who knows the number (I remember one) 

To whose glad youth the Campus has upheld 
Spring's green-and-silver mirror in the sun, 

How many musings it has paralleled 
When thought intruded on the wordless joy 

The field-lark set to music ; I have known 
How in new leaves and wind-swept straws a boy 

May see reflected his dear faith outgrown. 
For who shall measure what minutest change 

Can stiffen stem and bud or harden thought 
From tender trust to question, and estrange 

Old leaf and new, home and the youth it taught ? 
Chance breeze, chance word, — what grows that may 
escape it.? 

Light breeze or wind, light word or argument. 
Men's faith is as environment shall shape it. 

Trees are but twigs continuously bent. 
Thus it has been that simple faith in prayer, 

Entering these arcades, was blown away 
By '' winds of freedom " taken unaware 
In shining weather, and the mind swept bare 

Of confidence and any will to pray. 
So many hands there are to rend 

The masonry of faith apart ! 

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THE RELIGION OF A 
____ . g^,. 



Books unexplored, some rare new friend 
Whose trust already has had end. 

Who cannot find it in his heart 
To beg of what he cannot see, 

To dare inform Infinity ; 
So many hands destructive, and so few 
To rear upon the ruined heap a new 
Abiding comfort ! All too long remain 
The fragments, never wholly set again ; 

The winds of doubting blow the dust 

Of the old comfortable trust 

Whereto there stretches no return 

Save only as the mind may learn 

Some satisfaction to discern. 

in 

To such a mind a voice may reach, 
In class-time or some graver day. 
Whose calm authority of speech 
Shall fill an eager ear and teach 
A troubled spirit how to pray ; 

A voice like one, — this much we know : 
It sank in silence years ago 
When he was put from sight and sound 
Beneath the Arboretum ground, 
Where sweeps, as in a long caress. 
The pepper-branches' tenderness, — 
So much we know, howe'er we guess ! 
Voice unforgotten ! once your message came. 
Set in a quiet sentence ; others heard 
Doubtless no more than word trail after word 
Along the dry course of the droning hour, 
As in a drowsy shower 

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Drop follows drop along the window-frame ; 

Yet one heart there was stirred 

As by its name 

Called suddenly at night, a flame 
Leaped up with power 

Upon the instant to illume 

Its path's impenetrable gloom. 
Your words were like the ocean's utterance, 

Whose deep, illimitable swell 
Has waked a haunting assonance 

Within the hollow of a shell, 
An echo yearning to set free 
Its understanding of the sea, 
And able only to impart 
A hint of what is in its heart. 

IV 
** Prayer, if it be such deep desire 

For good that it shall realize 
Its hope in action, may aspire 

To answer and not otherwise/' 
So spake the voice, and prayer became 
A force, no more an emptied name ! 
And over faith's inverted cup 
A gleaming Grail was lifted up. 
No mere petition could express 
That inward prayer for righteousness, 
Nor any supplicating word 
Voice the diviner speech unheard ; 
For life itself was made the only prayer 

And life itself the only answer gained ; 
Unlimited the soul's expression there, 

Unlimited the heart's desire attained ! 



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RELIGION OF A SENSIBLE AMERICAN 

The eager stem shall find its hour 
Of answer in the opened flower, 
And the flower's rapt unfolding lead 
To rich fulfilment in the seed ; 
Man's self-dependent will to be 
In tune with God's high harmony, 
Right thinking ever turned to act 
Shall make unceasing prayer a fact, 
And prayer, thus answered, shall allow 
A larger faith and teach it how 
To find its heaven here and now ! 

*^ That selfsame moment I could pray 

And from my neck so free 
The Albatross fell off and sank 

Like lead into the sea.'' 



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